Is Jacksonville a foodie town? 'Top Chef' star's arrival at 220 Riverside a sign of good taste

Dede.Smith@Jacksonville.com Chef Kevin Sbraga (left), along with chef Greg Garbacz of a Sbraga Philadelphia restaurant, get questions answered from Jennifer Jones, director of Unity Plaza at 220 Riverside. Sbraga plans to open a restaurant there next year.

Kevin Sbraga (right), winner of season seven of "Top Chef," poses at Friendship Fountain in Jacksonville, with Alex Coley, principal of Hallmark Partners Inc. Sbraga's restaurant group is opening a location at 220 Riverside this fall. (Florida Times-Union, Bruce Lipsky)

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He’s won one of television’s top cooking shows.

He’s a successful chef with two Philadelphia restaurants — and a third on the way.

And now Kevin Sbraga is coming to Jacksonville.

Sbraga, winner of the seventh season of Bravo’s “Top Chef,” plans to open the restaurant in the mixed-use development at 220 Riverside Ave. early next year, becoming the project’s first commercial tenant.

“I think it says a lot for a celebrity chef like him to make the decision to come here,” said Tom Gray, owner of Moxie Kitchen + Cocktails and former partner in Bistro Aix. “I think it would raise our stature and makes Jacksonville more of a dining destination.”

Sbraga isn’t the only restaurateur looking a Jacksonville. Jeff Ruby, who owns high-end steakhouses in Louisville and Cincinnati, was in Jacksonville recently looking at possible restaurant sites.

Other property owners indicate that they’re on the lookout for chefs to open in their buildings, meaning that more high-end dining could be coming downtown.

Sbraga, who was in Jacksonville touring the project Wednesday, said he doesn’t know exactly what the new restaurant will be yet, other than it will be upscale.

“We don’t want to transplant what we’re doing in Philadelphia down here,” he said. “It will be unique to Jacksonville. It will definitely have a local influence. You can’t come down here and not have red snapper.

“It’s tougher in Philadelphia, where you only have local produce for four or five months a year. But down here you have it for 10 months. With the oysters and shrimp, I feel like I’m in a playground.”

He opened namesake restaurant Sbraga in 2011 and last year it won the Eater Award for the best restaurant in Philadelphia. Its entire menu is fixed price: Four courses for $55 with an additional cost for dry-aged pork or matched wines.

Fat Ham opened in December with Southern influences and dishes such as Nashville hot chicken and country-fried lobster tail. The sharable plates are all under $15.

He plans to open a third restaurant, Juniper Commons, in November in Philadelphia.

ONE OF THREE

Sbraga’s Jacksonville restaurant will be one of three that will occupy most of the ground-floor retail strip at 220 Riverside, according Alex Coley, principle with NAI Hallmark Partners, the project’s developer.

A casual restaurant, most likely by a local restaurateur, will be announced for 220 Riverside in about a month, he said. A bar and grill will be announced about a month after that.

The restaurants will overlook Unity Plaza, a public/private space where Coley once envisioned 200 events a year, but now said it could be far more.

Hallmark worked with VSAG, a Maryland-based restaurant consulting group, to find what Coley called the right match for the site. Dan Simons, principal of VSAG, said he considered restaurateurs from literally around the world for the site.

“It’s really a culture match because all the principles are aligned,” he said. “Community matters to Kevin and being connected to his surroundings in an authentic way really matters.”

Simons said he’s been to Jacksonville five or six times recently to get a feel for the culinary scene here.

“I think it’s a dining scene with local folks working really hard and there’s some good stuff going on,” he said. “But it’s young in its culinary development. It’s early. It’s a teenager trying to figure out who it is.

“The offerings are behind what the city wants, so I think the population, the diners are more advanced in their desires for food and beverages than what the scene is giving them.”

GROWING UP

Those who have been around Jacksonville’s restaurants have seen progressively finer dining.

Tim Felver came to town in 1987 to open American Bistro. Florida Café and 24 Miramar followed.

“I think it was apparent that Jacksonville was going to change in the early ’90s,” he said, “when it was forced to look at something other than barbecue. People got into ethnic foods, into vegetables and fish.”

Gray grew up in Jacksonville but learned his way around a kitchen in New York, San Diego, Los Angeles and the Napa Valley.

But he came back home in 1999 as executive chef and operating partner at Bistro Aix.

“There really weren’t very many restaurants to choose from,” he said. “There were plenty of chains, but not that many independent restaurants that did true made-from-scratch food with local ingredients. For me, it was a bit of shock.”

The local ingredients were a particular issue. Gray was used to the West Coast, where Alice Waters had pioneered the idea of preparing cutting-edge food with what was not only in season, but what was grown or raised in the area.

Since few restaurants were using ingredients from around here, few farms were producing them.

“There was Twin Bridges and that was about it,” he said.

“And with our style of food,” he said, “we struggled at first. Nobody really knew the style of food we were making, French Mediterranean. When you go out, people like to describe it as ‘It’s like this,’ but there was no other like this.”

But it did catch on. More customers appreciated what they were doing, more restaurants began seeking local ingredients and more farms began supplying it.

The key, he said, is independent restaurants.

“The decisions that chains are making are not necessarily in touch with their immediate restaurant,” he said. “It’s harder to adapt to the people around you when the decisions are being made in a different time zone.

“Independent restaurants can be much more creative and ingredient-driven. We don’t have a corporate contract with a semi that rolls in at 3 in the morning.”

Gray talked about the gradual progress he’s seen in Jacksonville, mentioning some of the same restaurants that Sbraga has visited in the past few days: Black Sheep, Orsay and Taverna.

Tastes have changed, said Felver, who has a bakery and serves only lunch at his French Pantry.

“When we opened in 1987, I was bringing in goat cheese from Atlanta and nobody knew what it was. Now I’m buying 50 pounds a week.”

MORE COMING?

And there’s indication of more high-end dining coming to downtown.

Steve Atkins has said he has a commitment from a high-end restaurant in Atlanta to open in the Marble Bank Building, though he hasn’t named the tenant yet.

Jacques Klempf, who is in the partnership that owns Ovinte and Bistro Aix, is buying the Bostwick Building but has not yet talked about plans.

Mike Langton bought the Old Republic National Title Insurance building on Forsyth Street and is renovating it with his eye on a ground-floor restaurant.

“Absolutely, something upscale and urban chic,” he said. “I’ve got two or three entities still circling. It’s just a natural. It’s next to the Florida Theatre with 200 shows a year that attract a lot of people with strong, disposable income. They’d want dinner before the show, maybe dinner and cocktails after.”

He’s also negotiating to buy a building at 331 W. Forsyth St., and said he has two restaurants interested in that.

“You really need clusters of restaurants to create a restaurant-row mentality,” he said. “Then people think of downtown as a dining destination.

“I just believe downtown needs a couple of those, needs half a dozen of those. Like Mitchell’s, Capital Grille, like Moxie. That will make downtown really cook.”